The 20th century was a revolution in children’s dress. Proper childrenswear, such as the all-in-one skeleton suit for boys, and uncorseted empire lines for girls, allowed, at long last, the wearer to actually move.

"It is impossible to overemphasise the role played by knitted garments in the democratisation of children’s clothes,” says Noreen Marshall, author of Dictionary Of Children’s Clothes. Knitwear became popular after zoologist Dr Gustav Jäger wrote

Until the turn of the 20th century, uncomfortable layers were a staple of children’s clothes: not just to keep warm, but also to protect modesty and add shape to the outer clothes children wore. Sometimes, a few extra layers were just what

Dressing siblings in matching outfits gives the family a neat look – just look at the Beckham boys. But, according to psychologists, dressing siblings identically might not be the best thing for their developing identities. So think before following suit.

“A child’s appearance has an awful lot to do with his behaviour,” pronounced Women’s Wear Daily in 1966. “Put a girl in a pretty dress and she behaves like a lady. If you put a boy in something he really likes, he will behave like a well-mannered child.” Worn correctly – with tuc...

You may well think pink is for girls and blue is for boys but historically, more often than not, the opposite was true. Instead, boys wore pink because of its associations with the ‘power’ colour red, whilst girls were more likely to be clad in ‘Virgin Mary’ blue.

The trend for all things naval kicked off when the artist Franz Winterhalter painted the four-year-old Prince Albert Edward in a white sailor suit for a Channel Islands’ cruise in 1846. By the 1870s, both boys and girls were sporting the look.

Trends may come and go, but the children’s look inspired by generations of royals (think Queen Victoria dressing her children in kilts at Balmoral; or little Charles and Anne in their double-breasted, velvet-collared Harris tweed coats) has run

. Children started wearing jeans in the Fifties, but the look really took off in the Seventies with the bell bottoms and skinny-jean-and-jacket combo that was the denim suit. Today, jeans are a staple in the wardrobe of every child and even newborns wear

. Children started wearing jeans in the Fifties, but the look really took off in the Seventies with the bell bottoms and skinny-jean-and-jacket combo that was the denim suit. Today, jeans are a staple in the wardrobe of every child and even newborns wear